The production of large quantities of relatively pure, biologically active polypeptides and proteins is important economically for the manufacture of human and animal pharmaceutical formulations, enzymes, and other specialty chemicals. For production of many proteins, recombinant DNA techniques have become the method of choice because large quantities of exogenous proteins can be expressed in mammalian host cells and, bacteria, and other host cells.
The primary structure of a mammalian NGF (mouse NGF) was first elucidated by Angeletti and Bradshaw, Proc. Natil. Acad. Sci. USA 68:2417 (1971). The primary structure of its precursor, pre-pro-NGF, has been deduced from the nucleotide sequence of the mouse NGF cDNA (Scott et al. Nature 302:538 (1983); Ullrich et al. Nature 303:821 (1983)).
The homologous human NGF (hNGF) gene has also been identified (Ullrich, Symp. on Quan. Biol., Cold Spring Harbor 48:435 (1983); U.S. Pat. No. 5,288,622, issued Feb. 22, 1994, which is incorporated herein by reference). Its homology to the mouse NGF is about 90% and 87%, on the amino acid and nucleotide sequence levels, respectively. Due to the scarcity of naturally-occurring human NGF, it has not been prepared from natural sources in quantities sufficient to biochemically characterize in fine detail.
Additional neurotrophic factors related to NGF have since been identified. These include brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) (Leibrock, et al., Nature, 341:149-152 (1989)), neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) (Kaisho, et al., FEBS Lett., 266:187 (1990); Maisonpierre, et al., Science, 247:1446 (1990); Rosenthal, et al., Neuron, 4:767 (1990)), and neurotrophin 4/5 (NT-4/5) (Berkmeier, et al., Neuron, 7:857-866 (1991)). GDNF, a distant member of the TGF-beta. super family, and neurturin (“NTN”) are two, recently identified, structurally related, potent survival factors for sympathetic sensory and central nervous system neurons (Lin et al. Science 260:1130-1132 (1993); Henderson et al. Science 266:1062-1064 (1994); Buj-Bello et al., Neuron 15:821-828 (1995); Kotzbauer et al. Nature 384:467-470 (1996)).
Producing recombinant protein involves transfecting host cells with DNA encoding the protein and growing the cells under conditions favoring expression of the recombinant protein. The prokaryote E. coli is has been a favored host because it can be made to produce recombinant proteins in high yields at low cost. Numerous U.S. patents on general bacterial expression of DNA encoding proteins exist, including U.S. Pat. No. 4,565,785 on a recombinant DNA molecule comprising a bacterial gene for an extracellular or periplasmic carrier protein and non-bacterial gene; U.S. Pat. No. 4,673,641 on co-production of a foreign polypeptide with an aggregate-forming polypeptide; U.S. Pat. No. 4,738,921 on an expression vector with a trp promoter/operator and trp LE fusion with a polypeptide such as IGF-I; U.S. Pat. No. 4,795,706 on expression control sequences to include with a foreign protein; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,710,473 on specific circular DNA plasmids such as those encoding IGF-I.
Genetically engineered bio-pharmaceuticals are typically purified from a supernatant containing a variety of diverse host cell contaminants. NGF, in particular, has been reportedly purified to varying extent with varying degrees of effort and success using a number of different methods. See for example, Longo et al., IBRO Handbook, vol. 12, pp 3-30 (1989); U.S. Pat. No. 5,082,774, which discloses CHO cell production of NGF; Bruce and Heinrich (Neurobio. Aging 10:89-94 (1989)); Schmelzer et al. J Neurochem. 59:1675-1683(1992); Burton et al., J Neurochem. 59:1937-1945(1992)). These efforts have been primarily at laboratory scale.
However, preparative isolation of recombinant human NGF resulting in pharmaceutical purity and high yield, essentially free of variants, has eluded the art.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an efficient protocol for selectively separating neurotrophins, particularly NGF and NGF-family of neurotrophins, from their variants and other molecules, and from other polypeptides with high pI. The process of purifying neurotrophins at large scale should be applicable to starting material from varying sources, including fermentation broth, lysed bacterial or mammalian cells, to supply clinical needs. Furthermore, as the present inventors have discovered previously unknown, difficult-to-separate neurotrophin variants, for example NGF variants, the methods presented herein are particularly useful to provide commercially useful amounts of recombinant neurotrophins, including human NGF (rhNGF), rhNT-3, and rhNT-4/5 and desirable genetically engineered mutants thereof, that are substantially free of undesirable variants. These and other objects of the invention will now be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art.